A Top Ten “Tasteless” from Center for Immigration Studies

Stephen Piggott • Oct 18, 2011

Yesterday, anti-immigrant group Center for Immigration Studies wrote a blog bashing Herman Cain for his call for an electrified border fence. CIS slammed Cain’s “thoughtless remarks,” also calling them “ill-informed and ill-considered comments.” Mother Jonesresponded this morning slamming CIS, and providing some examples of “thoughtless” remarks that CIS staffers have made this year.

With that article in mind, we decided to offer up a collection of a top ten “tasteless” (actually downright racist) remarks that CIS has gone on record with over the past few years. Enjoy:

In 2009, Mark Krikorian lamented the pronunciation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s last name stating, “While in the past there may well have been too much social pressure for what sociologists call Anglo-conformity, now there isn’t enough.”

In a September 2011 blog for National Review, Krikoirian stated, “I think Jew-hatred is so deeply rooted in the Arab and broader Islamic world that even governments that would want to help end the citizenship limbo of Palestinian refugees and their descendants would hesitate, fearing popular uprisings and Islamist attack.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center: in 2008, shortly after the failure of Washington Mutual Bank, Krikorian found a press release recently issued by the bank that celebrated its inclusion on a list of “Business Diversity Elites.” He posted the news release at National Review Online with the headline “Cause and Effect?” — a clear suggestion that Washington Mutual’s commitment to opening its ranks to Latinos had caused its financial collapse.

In May of this year, CIS staffer David North ludicrously stated that “gay couples do not reproduce.”

In a September 2010 blog, CIS staffer David North blamed undocumented immigrants for the historic high rates of teenage obesity in the United States.

In a 2011 memo, CIS fellow James R. Edwards proposed “broader grounds for exclusion” when considering visa applicants, and stated that “In-depth examination of visa applicants’ beliefs and attitudes toward Western democracy and liberty could be part of the screening process.”